TESTING the Bigger Bolder Baking Cookbook: Behind the Book (Episode II)

You know, I kind of find that with me personally, the more I’ve got on my plate the more I’ll actually do. Recipe testing, it was fun, but it was very labor intensive. So I’m back recipe testing today. I have a bake sale in three days to sell all of the products from the cookbook and nobody actually knows it’s from the cookbook people think I’m just recipe testing which is kind of exciting because I get to see what they think. So I had a bake sale when I was testing recipes for the book and the reason I did it is because, number one, Irish people like to make life harder for themselves and that’s exactly what I did. I’m back recipe testing again today and I just made a recipe for the rolling pin chapter. It is a buttery almond kind of a breakfast pastry, check out that guy. I wanted to make sure that all of the recipes we tested, they all found a good home. I don’t like waste and I wanted to make sure that they didn’t all go into the bin and people got to enjoy them. So I asked a few people and I looked around and I found that No Kid Hungry do these amazing fundraiser bake sales so I set the date for the bake sale and we worked up towards that date to make sure that all the recipes were tested and done. We have our Tahoe peanut butter bars over here and we had to set up an extra cooker in the sitting room. That is shortbread. Irish shortbread. So that’s also gonna be in the book, so we’re excited about all these recipes, aren’t we, Waffles? So what’s the process like with your recipe testing? I’m pretty good at reading recipes so I have a fairly good idea if it’s gonna work out. So far 99% of everything we’ve made has worked out. I find a recipe. I make one up. I test it and usually it works. And now I have to document everything. You write a recipe then you test it. You might have to go back and change it then you test it again, you might have to go back and change it again. All of the recipes in the book were tested minimum 2-3 times. This is a blueberry cheesecake. This is a lemon and blueberry pound cake that’s gonna get a glaze. Cinnamon roll bundt cake. We tested a lot and I really had to make sure that they were perfect, that every detail was in there that the quantities were spot on just to make sure that what I have in the picture in the book is exactly what you end up with as well. I just tried a recipe that I had from home from Ireland for profiteroles and what we have here in the pot… I don’t even know what this is, it smells weird. During the process, like, some got marked off the list because I felt like they weren’t strong enough to compete with the recipes I’d already chosen for the book, like maybe they didn’t match like the theme, they didn’t fall into a chapter like wooden spoon and bowl or like no oven needed. So I also made a carrot cake. Now, it was a lovely carrot cake and I was taking it out of the tin to show Olivia my culinary assistant how nice it was and it literally snapped in half. So here I am recipe testing for the book, I am in my neighbors house because my oven is broken. So a really fun thing happened during the whole bake sale and the testing process, my oven broke in my kitchen, the heating element went out. My neighbors Sharon and Howard let us into their house, they’ve got a gorgeous kitchen it’s way nicer than mine and a lovely big oven so they let me use their oven so we baked off trays of cookies so for one morning before the bake sale I went between my house and their house with trays upon trays of cookies and we also set up a little toaster oven in the sitting room to bake any excess cookies and things like that, any cakes. So as you can see I’ve got a little toaster oven that I’ve been testing all of my recipes for the cookbook, yes, 115 recipes in a toaster oven. So if you guys have any complaints email them to Kevin because I need a new oven. It’s kind of Murphy’s Law that something like that would happen. In the Bigger Bolder Baking cookbook I’ve got a whole chapter dedicated to recipes that you don’t need an oven for. For me personally I find them really convenient especially if you’re entertaining and already occupying your oven. It’s something that can be made in advance maybe a day or 2 in advance and popped into your fridge or your freezer. And if when you go through the Bigger Bolder Baking cookbook from cover to cover you will find a lot of recipes like that. A not-so-traditional way to make something. So it’s 8 pm here in Santa Monica. I’ve been recipe testing for the last 11 hours. I’ve been in this kitchen since 7 am. It hasn’t been easy, not gonna lie to you. I haven’t had a shower today. I haven’t eaten today. I have wine, which is helping. I learned a lot from the testing process. There has to come a point, and this is actually in regards to the book in all, there has to come a point where you have to just bless it and be done with it. You know you’ve tested it 2,3,4 times. Maybe one time it didn’t come out exactly the same as the others then you wanna test it again to be sure. These are Anziak cookies these are like really oatey, they’re Australian cookies. So these are coconut kisses they are going to be in the first chapter of the book. I stand by my recipes, I know they work. I put a lot of effort into them making sure that they come out just right. I had to make sure that all the recipes were really special, that they all shined in their own right. The book, what I wanted it to be, was a solid collection of recipes that people will treasure and for it to be their baking bible going forward, something that they can always put their hands on anytime and make something really special out of. So I’m testing recipes for the book. As you can see I’ve got all of my notes up here. The green are the recipes that I’ve done and everything else is what I haven’t done and I still have yet to do. So the way I like to work is I like to make lists and I like to check things off lists. It just makes me feel a little better it helps me visualize what I’ve done and what I haven’t done. I printed out the list of recipes, everything we had to test and I got a green marker and I marked off as we went, each recipe that was tested. Really really exciting news, you know my list that was on the wall? Ta Da! Where are we. This one, I just have to mark that one off and that’s one chapter totally tested. We’re doing ok, we’re getting there. We’re grand. We’re doing great. How much, like, what percent do you think we’re done here for tomorrow? Very, a lot. I’d say 60%. You’re keeping me in the dark this woman. I’d say 60%. I have no clue. It took me some time, those sheets were up there for probably, I’d say, 2-3 months but like slowly but surely, 115 recipes they all got tested. I’m about to mark off the last recipe to be tested in the book. I’m gonna give myself a little drumroll. 115 recipes done and dusted, tested, ready for my book. That’s exciting. It is, it’s really exciting. With taking on a book there are so many different parts to it, it just kind of signified that one part was almost finished and I was gonna move onto the next part. Bake sale. Also May the fourth. Or was that yesterday? May the 5th. It’s Cinco de Mayo. What was Star Wars day? Yesterday. Today’s a way more important day. We’re having a bake sale. We’re having a charity bake sale and we’re selling like everything in the world. Cobblers, cookies, pies, cheesecake. What else? Coconut cake. Hit me. What’s this mean? We’re dressed up, we look nice. I met some really great people that day. 2 of everything. Ok. People from all around the LA area, Bold Bakers, people who watched me on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram showed up to support No Kid Hungry and to support me which was really awesome. The thing about it is that nobody knew I was writing the book at that stage so all the people who showed up were buying and tasting the recipes and nobody knew that they were from the book. But the results of the bake sale were astounding. Everybody was super generous and at the end our money was actually matched by another sponsor so we raised around $5,000 which provided tons of meals for kids who are waking up in the morning hungry who are going to school with an empty tummy and for kids who are out there just struggling so it really was definitely well worthwhile. It was a lot of work, but that’s the kind of work I like to do. It meant something, it provided something for others and I got to bake and that makes me really happy so baking and sharing is kind of one of my most favorite things to do. You know, I kind of find that with me personally, the more I’ve got on my plate the more I’ll actually do. I am planning on delivering the manuscript for the book three weeks early and I’m really trying to keep that deadline so please god that will happen. So during the testing of the recipes I also had a deadline to hit to deliver the manuscript. So that was all the recipes finished 100% and which also included a little blurb on top of every recipe. So finally when I delivered the manuscript I felt relief. What you doing Gem? I’m about to send off my manuscript for my book. How you feeling? I’m feeling good. A week early. It’s pretty tight. I’m really happy. What was the process like? It was fun! It was really fun. It was a lot of man hours. It took a long time, I’ve been doing it for six months, over six months. But it was fun. Congratulations! Good going. I’m gonna go get a massage. Every day, an evening, an early morning was spent pulling this book together and it was finally out of my hands and onto the publisher. You know there’s a point where you have to just say enough is enough and send it off, and I was really happy with how and in what state the manuscript was in and it was ready to go to the publisher. However that meant I had to move on to the next process of the book which was the photography. Coming up in the next episode. I was very excited about the photography. It was actually the part I was looking forward to the most in the cookbook. I was also a little bit nervous because I really wanted the photography of the book to be just rockstar photos.